Guest Post: The Perses Effect by R E Robinson Jr

The Story Behind The Story

I talked about two areas of knowledge I have, criminal justice and the military. So I pulled inspiration from those areas when I drafted my story.

Another area that inspired me takes me back some years to my childhood. Comic books. I read and read those things when I was younger. I still find myself looking at new issues because they have matured as I have throughout the years. They can take many directions with the most prevalent being super powered heroes. There are also fantasy and real life elements involved with comic books.

I mentioned that the majority of my characters are based on my friends and some on family. How they act in the book is not always how they act in real life. I just needed them as a basis for a character. Using friends and family made writing the character feel more real, more three-dimensional. Tack on the problems they face with loosing friends and family coupled with some of them having newfound powers or in relationships with others that have powers and readers can relate to their struggle. It humanizes the characters.

It’s a sound strategy that Stan Lee pioneered years ago with Marvel comics. Placing his heroes in real cities and giving the flaws made them more like real people.

When deciding on where the story would take place I couldn’t think of a better place than my hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia. I’ve lived other places but I know this one the best. And besides those friends in my story live here also. I didn’t know enough about the other places I’ve lived to describe them in a way the reader would believe.

Making the reader believe is key to a good story. It’s the reason I chose to write on what I know about. If I tried to write a book about let’s say being a CIA operative entangled in a foreign mystery it would come off cheesy. I don’t know much about being a CIA operative. I could do some research but it would still sound flimsy to the reader.

The average reader is more intelligent than the average moviegoer. So to be entertained in a book the story has to be believable. I know comic book type super powers aren’t believable but neither are vampires that sparkle. Oops! Did I say that out loud? My point is that if there was a way to ground the superpowers in reality say like a genetic mutation then who’s to say it can’t be possible. Science is evolving faster than we may want it to and if we can clone sheep there may be no limit to how DNA can be manipulated.

I hope that my ideas and characters come across the pages to readers as I saw them being played out in my head.


Author Bio:

Ronald E. Robinson Jr. served in the US Army and has a criminal justice degree. He lives in Georgia with his family.


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